WATER VERSUS FROST.
- Cut foliage can be saved from frost in other ways. The leaf dies and blackens solely because it cannot take up moisture, not because its tissues are torn by the actual frost. I saw many years ago a really marvellous demonstration of the use of this piece of knowledge to a scientific gardener. After and during a very severe May frost he watered with a rose watering-can alternate rows of his early potatoes, which were many inches above the ground, leaving the others untouched. The work was done before the sun could reach the plants. A day or two later all the unwatered rows were black and wilted ; all the watered rows were as nearly as may be unaffected. The proof was absolute. Inability to supply the lost moisture was the cause of the blackening. It would probably well pay the growers of early potatoes to use the sprayers, which are now almost a necessity, to spray their potatoes with mere water early every morning when five or six degrees of frost had been registered in the night.
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